Traditional Cyan (C), Magenta (M), Yellow (Y), and Black (K) (or CMYK) laser or Light Emitting Diode (LED) type printers come standard with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black toner and/or drum cartridges. However, traditional black toner printers and CMYK toner printers are generally unable to print in white as the foreground or as the background because these printers lack white toner and/or drum cartridges and the appropriate raster image processor (RIP) software for printing cartridge re-mapping. Printing in white toner is feasible through the use of white toner printers and would generally allow a user to print on dark or clear media, but white media printers are dedicated to CMYW only where white is always a top color. This system does not allow printing on clear or dark media and may require the user to buy an entirely new printer.
Printers that print both in white and color are CMYKW printers with a minimum of five toner printing cartridges and white is always the last cartridge which does not allow a layer of white to be put down first as a background color.
An LED printer is a type of toner printer similar to a laser toner printer. LED technology uses a light-emitting diode array as a light source instead of a laser.
Typical CMYK printers use all four colors but assume that the media used is white. Thus, any blank or empty area in an image is assumed to be white by the printer. This is usually appropriate for light or white media, but typically causes problems when darker media is used. For example, a picture of a person wearing a white shirt on white paper will appear white, but will be the color of the media when colored media is used.
Thus, there is a need for a system and method for converting or retrofitting a standard CMYK (four cartridge) toner printer to print using white toner and wherein the layer of white toner may be a background or foreground color.